


Abomination

by GentleSharks



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Biphobia, Canon-Typical Violence, Catholic, Catholic Guilt, Catholicism, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Death, Gen, Homophobia, Religion, Trauma, of sorts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 09:25:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12429837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GentleSharks/pseuds/GentleSharks
Summary: A shocking case brings back previously repressed memories and feelings concerning his sexuality and religion in Sonny.





	Abomination

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow this is the first time I chose to publish a work on here!  
> The story is mostly a result of headcanons I developed based on the conversation between Sonny and Father Eugene in S17E18 and is essentially a chronology of Sonny's struggle with his sexuality while growing up in a catholic environment. It's also one of my headcanons for how he might come out in a realistic context for the show.

The case itself was horrifying enough. A 15-year old boy was found dead, the body had been disposed of in the tradition of a Christian burial, except it was buried at an abandoned building site rather than a cemetery. However, aside from the illegal burial, the case quickly became a murder investigation for the SVU when the pathologist found evidence of not only electro shocks having been crudely performed on the genitals, but of an attempted lobotomy, which he assumed to be the cause of death as well. After a few dead ends the team narrowed it down to one last suspect: The victim’s mother. 

Sonny and Amanda watched as Olivia, her back towards the mirror, managed a confession out of the woman. None of them could wrap their heads around someone doing something so unspeakable to their own child.

“When he came to me and said ‘Mom, I’m bisexual’ I thought he was joking, you know. But he wasn’t. So I tried to get him some help.” It wasn’t news to any of them that these prejudices were still persistent in many people’s heads, but none of them would have thought her actions possible. It was unbelievable that she delivered the confession in tears, desperate for Olivia to understand her, as if she hadn’t killed her own son. She claimed it was an accident but the amount of physical abuse was impossible to brush aside.

“They don’t do this kind of therapy here anymore. No-one would do it. You need to understand, this was gonna save him. It’s the only thing that could save his soul!” Sending a child to conversion therapy these days was frowned upon, to say the least. But it is one thing to send a child to conversion therapy, and another to try to perform outdated conversion practices yourself without any medical or pseudo-medical background. 

On your own child. 

Sonny exchanged a look with Amanda that communicated nothing but a loss of faith in humanity before the woman proceeded. They didn’t need to say these things. It was common sense.

"I wanted to help my son, I wanted to protect him. God needed to see that he’s not an abomination, that he wanted to change and asked for forgiveness for these thoughts. He would have gone to hell if he hadn’t changed." Suddenly it got very hot. For a brief moment Sonny suspected that the A/C just gave in. Maybe if he just loosened his tie... But his heart was beating too fast, making him hot from inside. He tried to roll his sleeves up but his hands were too numb. Now he started feeling dizzy as well. _Just breathe_ , he thought and just then realised how fast he's been breathing already. His ears were blocked too now and he could barely hear what the mother was saying. He realised he was losing his grip on the here and now as his vision started to be obscured by spots that were simultaneously bright and swallowing all light. Within seconds he felt utterly immobilized by it all. His fight-or-flight response kicked in and he decided to go. _Just go_. 

"’scuse me", he muttered under his breath and staggered away. But it felt like the floor was moving under him and he was afraid to fall or raise suspicion by swaying, though he couldn’t tell whether he was swaying or not. Now that he fled he tried to come up with a reasonable place to go. The bathroom. No-one would suspect that. But a few moments later there was a knock on the door. He wanted to make a witty remark as a way to cover up his panic attack, but he found himself unable to speak because he was splashing water in his face continuously. He stopped himself. When he was done drying his face with paper towels, Amanda was standing behind him. Apparently she had suspected.

"I'm sorry", Sonny said immediately. She was confused, but whether her confusion stemmed from Sonny’s apology or from his departure he couldn't tell.

"What's wrong, you looked like you saw a ghost.", she said carefully. Sonny shook his head lightly.  
"It's just.. I don’t know. I guess what she said- It reminded me of something my mother said to me". He tried to process his thoughts and above all, process what he just said. Before his thoughts were sorted however, shock and realisation already spread on Amanda’s face.

"Carisi... hey..." She tried to comfort him by rubbing his arms lightly. Apparently he looked like he was about to cry because she got increasingly more worried. "Come on, hey, calm down. Do you wanna talk about it?" He never has before. He didn't want to now, either. But it felt like her words were the last drop in a barrell and he couldn't hold it inside of him anymore. It had to come out. It had to _pour out_.

* * *

At 10 he looked like the poster boy for boyhood: his blond curls were always gelled down by his mother and his blue eyes constantly crinkled with laughter. In fact, he was rarely not smiling or laughing; you don't get nicknamed Sonny for nothing after all. On Sundays he was an especially delightful sight in a navy blue suit with a pale blue tie and flushed cheeks, because some adults couldn’t help themselves but pinch them while saying things like: “Isn’t he adorable!” on the churchyard. The family didn’t miss a single day of church, so aside from school it was Sonny’s and his sisters’ main social circle.

But one Sunday there was a new kid at church. Wild, dark curls framed his face, still round, perhaps with baby fat. His green eyes seemed to glow behind the dark lashes. To Sonny he was the most beautiful boy he had ever seen. Naturally, it didn’t take long for them to become friends. At that age, when both your lives are dominated by church, school and the occasional TV show that your parents permitted, becoming friends was easy. But even in his immature naivité, Sonny knew that to him the boy, called Andre, was more than that. He felt it every time he looked at him. And one day, his mother felt it too.

"So what's her name?", she asked out of nowhere when Sonny had kitchen duty and was alone with her. He didn’t know what she was referring to and when he stayed silent for too long she inquired more: "I can tell you have a crush, Dominick. Is she from church? Or school?" Sonny couldn't help but start beaming. He _did_ have a crush. Yet, had he been a few years older, perhaps his maturity or developed deductive skills would have stopped him. Perhaps he would have been able to feel that there was a tension in the air or he simply would have listened to some of the sermons at church more attentively and known not to tell. However, he was only 10 and had a crush for the first time in his life, so he said in a shy voice:  
"Actually... It's Andre." Suddenly the colour drained from his mother's face and he would never forget the horror in her eyes that day.

"What? Don't you say that, Dominick!" He was abruptly overwhelmed with confusion and the foreboding of fear. He tried to understand what she was mad about all of a sudden but his brain was incapable of processing everything so fast. She grabbed him by the arms and nearly started shaking him.

"Say you didn't mean that!" He couldn't. For a moment they just stared at each other. Even though he may not have fully understood it then, he could read the disappointment, the fear and the loathing in her eyes. _Her eyes_. He would never forget the look in her eyes.

"Come on!" She suddenly grabbed his arm too hard and dragged him outside, to the car and to the church.

Sonny couldn't remember the last time he saw her like this. There would never be another time he saw her like this, either. For the first time in his life he felt a threat coming from a place where he had up until now felt only warmth. He was terrified by this sensation of not only warmth but safety being mixed with a heightened sensation of fear. At this point he was completely silent and frozen in an attempt to make sense of these feelings. They found the priest and his mother made Sonny confess to him what he had told her. He scolded him, made him recite prayers, and eventually threatened him.

"If you don't take that back and ask God for forgiveness, we'll have send you away", they said. "To a place where they'll get it out of you". He wasn't even sure what "it" was. 

At home his mother looked at him sternly as she knelt in front of him. She did that to feign real compassion. Sonny knew because she had never done it before. 

"I just want to help you. To protect you. You need to show God that you’re not an abomination, Dominick. You need to show Him that you want to change, you need to ask for His forgiveness. These thoughts are bad, Dominick, and if you can't get rid of them yourself you'll have to go to a place where they help you so you don't have to go to hell. I don’t want that to happen."

Sonny spent that night crying and praying. It was hard to pray. He wasn’t sure what to pray for or what to ask God to forgive him for. He had felt this warm tingling inside of him when he thought about Andre only a few hours before and now the tingling was silenced by guilt. It felt like the priest and his mother’s words were a pillow, slowly suffocating all the butterflies inside him. It was hard to make himself believe that they were dead, and even harder to make Him believe it.

From that point on he only saw Andre at church sometimes and they'd smile at each other. But something had changed and it was almost unbearable to smile at him when that alone felt like a sin. And slowly, Andre seemed to feel the same way and they didn’t even look at each other anymore until they disappeared from each other’s lives completely. He suspected, today, that his parents told Andre's about his confession and that he had to go through the same. And the fact that on the Sunday of the same week the priest chose to warn the churchgoers about the sin of homosexuality and asked them to resent the devil should he ever tempt them, might not have been a coincidence.


End file.
